Cooking with Kids

The cotton candy was sticky, the corn dogs corny. But at the first-ever Cooking with Kids session at last week’s annual Northwestern Michigan Fair the food was vitamin-packed and aimed at turning more kids on to the flavors of fresh fruits and vegetables grown by local farms.

And it worked. Families grabbed copies of the recipes they just saw demonstrated in the Cooking with Kids gazebo, marched right over to the fair’s first-ever farmers market, and bought the fresh produce they needed to try the same thing at home.

It was quite an afternoon: For four hours, kids and parents streamed through the screened-in gazebo, where four chefs-three of them from four-star restaurants in northwestern Michigan-helped kids make pasta salad, wraps, and smoothies.

It was a joint effort of the volunteer chefs, health educators, the fair, and the Michigan Land Use Institute, which organized the event and annually publishes a printed and online guide to area farms called Taste the Local Difference

“What color do you think this is going to be?” Chef Ted Cizma of the posh Grand Traverse Resort and Spa asked the kids lined up in front of his table before he whirred up ingredients they’d helped him put into a blender for a smoothie. In the carafe were blueberries and cherries, golden honey, orange juice, green tea, and white yogurt.

“Like a rainbow,” one child answered.

Surprise. It was a purplish, pinkish blue.

And it wasn’t the only surprise.

Helping kids make wraps-from carrots, cucumbers, peppers, broccoli, peaches, blueberries, goat cream cheese, dried cherries, applesauce, and honey or vinaigrette-were Eric Patterson and Jenifer Blakeslee, chefs at the acclaimed, tiny, six-table Traverse City restaurant The Cook’s House.

“We never would have thought to put fruit in a wrap like that,” said Suzee Gignac, of Traverse City, as she and her daughters Parker, 10, and Kayla, 11, left the Cooking with Kids gazebo. They filled their wraps with cream cheese, applesauce, peaches, and blueberries. “This was great.”

And, with a choice of similar ingredients, chef Laura McCain urged kids to be creative in making their own individual servings of pasta salad. Ms. McCain, who is also a dietician, works at the Grand Traverse region’s primary hospital, Munson Medical Center, where she’s teamed up with the food company Sodexo Inc. to serve special Meet Your Farmer lunches in the cafeteria using fresh, locally grown produce.

“I want children to enjoy good food,” she said. “I want them to taste it, and look at how pretty it is. I just love to see families together and enjoying the bounty that grows here.”

Dana Cederquist, a member of the fair’s board of directors, wandered by and shook his head as he peered in and witnessed the kids’ enchantment.

“I’ve heard so many comments that the kids are enjoying it so much,” he said. “We had no idea it would be such a hit.”

Well, really, who can beat the flavors of really fresh foods and the charms of chefs in their formal white uniforms? Chef Cizma even wore a towering chef’s hat.

Lisa Peacock, who administers health programs for teens, and families at the Grand Traverse County Health Department explained why she volunteered.

“I’m here because I’m interested in the health of children,” she said. “I think it’s really great to have this healthy food amidst all this junk food.”

And then she laughed: “Even though my kids just went and bought elephant ears.”

Well, guess what?

When the gazebo closed at 7 p.m. and volunteers and chefs started packing away bowls and tablecloths, spoons and spices, the chefs got hungry.

Ted Cizma had left minutes ago. But Jennifer Blakeslee and Eric Patterson of The Cook’s House and Laura McCain of Munson Medical Center were sharing a treat-Elephant Ears.

“It’s the first elephant ear I’ve ever had in my life,” Ms. Blakeslee laughed. “Everyone came walking by with it and it looked so good. I thought ‘Yeah, I’m going to try it.’ It was pretty darn good. How can you go wrong with fried dough and sugar and carmel on it?”

It’s hard to knock fair traditions. Now, though, fresh food just might join the indulgent confections in the pantheon of food, ferris wheels, and squeals of delight.

Diane Conners is the Michigan Land Use Institute’s senior policy specialist for its Entrepreneurial Agriculture Program. Reach her at diane@mlui.org.